WordsDevelop Magazine

The Problems With Crunching

No matter how carefully planned the development schedule, everyone will work
24/7 over the last month of a game project. Steven Goodwin considers the
unsavoury side effects...

Localisation

English is not the only fruit. With a prominent international market, we need to cope with the vagrancies present in other languages. But how to begin?

The 7 Sins of Programmers

Programmers. The artists worship their bit twiddling capabilities. The designers exchange vast quantities of beer for new features and tools. And the producers sell their soul when they make the magic work. But inside the average programmer's psyche are several demons that need exorcising. This article looks at them...

Secure Programming

Game code is usually isolated from the real world. If we can't make something happen we change it, remove it, and generally mess about with it until we can. This gives us complete control over the game, and all the parameters within. When the game takes data from an untrusted source these parameters are tainted, and may have been maliciously altered to give a player extra damage points, crash an opponents computer, or even provide a back door to allow the installation of Linux (as happened with 007:Agent Under Fire)! This programmer-oriented article details a number of code examples that are fundamentally insecure, and how to fix them. It also details some useful tools to ensure secure programming techniques.

Leadership for the reluctant

Two years in the same company is a long time for most people, at which point they either move on, or move up. Most developers, programmers especially, tend to lack leadership skills to move up, and only do so through management insistence or great reluctance. Training is rarely forthcoming leaving them unprepared for their newly-found responsibilities. This article gives some (cynical) simple advice to help developers cope with leadership in this unenviable position.

Back to front development

When push comes to shove, and milestones are looming, we often postpone small tasks until the morning after. A bigger hangover comes when we postpone larger parts of the development until the end, whereas in fact they belong at the beginning. This article covers those areas, and why they should occur sooner, rather than later.